In clinical environments, administration of certain medications can be dependent on the results of discrete task assays, that is, certain laboratory tests, procedures, orderables, vital signs and the like, of the patient to whom a medication is to be administered. For instance, a patient having a low potassium level should not be administered the medication Digoxin, and a patient having a blood sugar level within a specified range should be administered only a certain amount of the medication Insulin. As such, such discrete task assays are often performed in conjunction with administration of a particular medication. However, oftentimes the same assays may have been performed by another clinician recently enough to still be considered acceptable for medication administration, unbeknownst to the clinician administering the medication, which can lead to repetitive testing, increased expense and inefficiency.
To avoid such repetition, the clinician administering the medication can browse an electronic medical record associated with the patient to determine if and when a result for the discrete task assay of interest was procured. However, this is a time consuming process and often requires navigation to multiple areas of the patient's electronic medical record where the particular result may be documented and stored.